Alternative to "gender affirming care."

[Everythingtastesbetterwithcheese]

I was on a discussion recently in which a poster said she didn't consider the double mastectomy a young woman had gone through in order to transition to a man, as radical surgery, claiming it was only "gender affirming care" and no different to a woman having lip fillers. This made me think the language we are using is minimising the actual brutality of the surgery and it feels like using the word care only has positive connotations when I think a lot of the treatment is negative.
What other term can I use instead of gender affirming care which is more realistic to what it actually is?

'Mastectomy' is a word that a lot of women will associate with life-saving treatment (cancer).
I think 'breast amputation' is a better fit for 'top surgery'

Yes, a patient in their late 40s/50s told me they were tired all the time. The person is a MtF trans-identified man. He has been castrated, so his testosterone is drastically lower than normal. He is on oestrogen.

I could only suggest he discuss with the gender clinic - how can anyone know what the effects of removing your natural hormones and using wrong sex hormones can be? I suspect he will ask his GP, but what is his GP supposed to say?

(TMI, but) I find it unpleasant to have breasts and particularly my nipples touched. I always have done. I've dealt with this by asking people not to touch them.

I've met so many people dealing with the consequences of mastectomy for cancer - scarring, nerve pain, arm swelling, hand issues etc etc - and find it frankly horrific that people get this done voluntarily to health bodies.

I think 'cosmetic mastectomy' fits the bill.

We need to name the surgery for what it is.

FWIW, I suspect that many of the people who minimise the surgery have never had surgery themselves, and for many of the young women who have it, they've never had surgery before either. I've had multiple operations now for a chronic condition and there were things I know now that I simply could not have understood until I went through it. It's easy to play it down when you don't know.

I also think when I see young women in the aftermath of surgery speak about how thrilled they are that it isn't properly understood that surgical regret often takes time to kick in. In the first few months, when you're in recovery, there is a degree of euphoria because the whole thing is so stressful and you're so relieved that you didn't die on the table. It's not until months later that you find out that the pain in the scar tissue isn't normal healing, it's your new normal, that it wasn't swelling but just the shape you've been left with, how much scar tissue hurts when you get a virus, that you're actually quite traumatised by the whole thing.

I've noticed that only men who are pretending to be women call it HRT. I assume because HRT is what it's called when women take it, so it's part and parcel of the larping.

Women who are pretending to be men talk specifically about testosterone and defeminise it.

FWIW, as someone who had both ovaries removed at a young age and is just about held together at the seams by HRT, I can confirm that messing with your hormones is utterly, utterly shit, short and long term.